


Not What You Want but What You Need

by Banana_daiquiri



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, F/M, Journey's End, Love, THAT SCENE, and an explanation, does it need saying?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-11 01:11:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7018999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Banana_daiquiri/pseuds/Banana_daiquiri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Journey's End. That scene, and why the Doctor said what he did. And what he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not What You Want but What You Need

Same scene, different circumstances.

The Doctor tucked his hands in his pockets and swallowed hard, keeping his expression schooled into one of composure. He was good at that. He’d had a bit of practice.

Hadn’t even let Rose see him cry the last time they’d been here. Well, _she’d_ been here. He’d been a ghost, unable to touch her despite how real he was able to make himself seem. He had a feeling there was a metaphor there. 

She was staring at him. The expression on her face was one he’d never forget: anger, incredulity, dread. And hurt. Most of all hurt. She shifted where she stood, uncertain where to move, what to do. The sand crunched under her feet. The ocean was all white noise behind them, the waves gray and comfortless.

“But he’s not you,” she finally managed, shaking her head, her eyes welling. 

The Doctor’s response was instantaneous, because it was the truth. “He needs you. That’s very me.”

Donna, newly chattier than ever, gave in to the irresistible urge to say what the Doctor wasn’t saying: what he might not spell out without a nudge. “But it's better than that, though. Don't you see what he's trying to give you?” She stepped closer to the Time Lord and encouraged, “Tell her. Go on.”

It was the other who spoke up, for which the Doctor was glad, busy as he was categorizing the strange phenomenon of having a wooden tongue. This had hurt before, but to do it again was worse. He’d never felt a pain like this before. It was physical. He watched mutely as Rose turned to his counterpart.

“I look like him and I think like him. Same memories, same thoughts, same everything. Except I've only got one heart.”

Rose, shell-shocked and unable to see what was right in front of her after so long not saying what they really meant, was slow on the uptake. “Which means?”

“I'm part human,” the new man elaborated simply, matter-of-factly. Keeping all emotion out of it. The Doctor admired him for that. He knew what he was doing, because he would have done the same. “Specifically, the aging part. I'll grow old and never regenerate. I've only got one life, Rose Tyler. I could spend it with you. If you want.”

Yes, admirably casual.

Rose bit her lip. “You'll grow old at the same time as me?”

“Together,” the Metacrisis confirmed simply, belying the loaded nature of that one word.

The Doctor felt a twisting in his chest so keen that the TARDIS reacted, prompting him to move while he still had a shred of self-control. “We've got to go,” he heard himself say. “This reality is sealing itself off forever.” 

There was still a little time. Not much, but time. For…for what, exactly? Rose had stepped toward him, and he felt his resolve turning to nervous energy. What if she said no? Begged to come with him?

“But, it's still not right, because the Doctor's still you,” Rose insisted. 

The Doctor glanced at the Metacrisis. It was quick, but he saw the hurt that flashed through the familiar brown eyes. He nodded that way. “And I'm him.”

Rose glanced between both of them, a new expression entering the race for dominance on her face: annoyance. Once upon a time, the Doctor had regenerated right in front of her. And she still couldn’t accept he was the same man. So this—this wasn’t going to fly. She looked hard at each of them again. The Metacrisis stayed stoic, but an apology lingered in the Doctor’s eyes. She forged on. “All right. Both of you, answer me this. When I last stood on this beach, on the worst day of my life, what was the last thing you said to me? Go on, say it,” she demanded.

“I said, Rose Tyler,” the Doctor said stiffly.

She regarded him incredulously. “Yeah? And how was that sentence going to end?”

The Doctor hesitated. The past spooled out in front of him, a film reel of every moment he’d ever spent with his amazing human girl. Of the coward he’d been in his ninth incarnation: of how it wasn’t until he was drawing the vortex from Rose Tyler (via an entirely unnecessary kiss, honestly) that he’d done it for the first time.

_I love you, Rose._

She’d always been a little telepathic. She would have laughed, brushed him off if he’d said anything about it out loud, but even before her mind had merged with the TARDIS’, she had been. All he had to do was think of taking her hand and there it always was, reaching for his. He’d think that chips sounded nice, and the next words out of her mouth would be about ducking in to the nearest chippy. Every time. When they were in a bind and he absolutely needed her to say or do something exact…Rose thought she was good at reading what he was trying to say with his eyes, but in reality it was much deeper and more complicated than that, because she always did what he needed her to in those moments. Without question. And soon it had become routine: every hug, every time he held her hand. Every time they sat in the door of the TARDIS together, legs dangling over the unending darkness of space above worlds unseen and times unvisited, all of it open to them—every moment out there a gift he wanted to give to her. He wanted none of it without her. So there it was, every time their eyes met in that doorway. _I love you, Rose Tyler._

And her eyes. That playful tongue poking out, the tip of it tracing the corner of her mouth in exactly the spot he wanted to trace with his own.

She was human, and he’d taken her far from her home. He’d lost companion after companion because they wanted to settle down; in some way or other he lost them for that reason. If Rose were to stay with him she would only ever leave him again via one means, he knew with certainty. And it would, more likely than not, be his fault. And so now he was being charitable, or maybe selfish, and probably both: he couldn’t bear for it to be his fault. He just couldn’t. He’d destroyed his own planet. Losing Rose that way would end him completely.

And there was no saying how he himself would change in the years to come. He saw timelines, but not himself; he could be anyone. Someone Rose was unhappy with. He knew of things that were still to happen for him, and he could not have Rose around for any of that. She did not get to regenerate; she would slowly be ruined emotionally. Mentally. She couldn’t know these things. Couldn’t realize how she’d lose herself. The Doctor was old enough to know.

But there was a long stretch of time outside of time in his head—a blink, really, but so very full—where every time he’d taken Rose’s soft hand and felt her warm palm press against his and counted the beat of her pulse against his wrist and felt how alive she was, he’d heard it. Just a little whisper back. Times in bed at night, secretly longing for her and feeling the answering touch of her want in his mind making it not so secret. He knew she’d found him out. He could not afford to believe that she had never heard him. It was too late now, much too late, and he needed to take this much with him. He needed to know she’d heard.

It all came down to this: she was testing them and so, not feeling terribly proud of himself, he tested her right back. “Does it need saying?”

In that moment when she looked away, his illusions were shattered. Her gaze broke from his because she did not understand what he was asking. Instead, she looked at the Metacrisis. The Doctor knew how it would unfold from here, and steeled himself.

“And you, Doctor? What was the end of that sentence?”

He watched his twin, who would be such a different man here; alone in this universe, yes, being so unique…but he’d never truly be _alone_ because Rose made all that go away. The means to the end of their common ache. Not the last of the Time Lords. Not here. The Doctor watched him bend and whisper the words in Rose’s ear the way he himself could never have said them. 

He felt something strange, then, something he had not anticipated: relief. Finally. He’d done something good. Yet quick as a match going out, the feeling was replaced by a pressing need: to run away from the sight in front of him. He swallowed again against the tight knot in his throat, and turned away before the selfish tears of jealousy could catch up. 

He disappeared into the TARDIS before Rose could realize he was leaving, Donna following close on his heels.

***

“Yeah? And how was that sentence going to end?”

There was a space of only a moment where they looked hard at each other, but Rose knew the Doctor’s poker face better than he thought. Smart and presumptuous and transparent. She saw his resolve as he let something of _them_ drain away forever into that safe space where he kept all his memories of former companions. She saw, and it made her feel ill to watch her own burial. 

But she knew he knew she knew and understood. 

The Doctor would always be who he was: the man she’d fallen in love with. And that meant he thought things through regardless of personal cost, and he was right—they had the burden of the Metacrisis to deal with. He was entrusting her with that. 

He’d seen a storm coming, once, and whatever he’d seen in it she knew this was only a part. Maybe he hadn’t known the details, but he’d begun the process of letting go a long time ago, she thought. No sooner had the Doctor met most people than he began the process of letting go of them. But he was leaving her with this now, and Donna was right. It was what he could give. He could not give any more.

She would grow old. She would slow him down. He would have to worry for her, leave her on the TARDIS when her arthritis got to be too much. He’d come back from his adventures and feel guilty when he came upon her asleep in their bed afterward. She couldn’t do it to him.

So she wondered if he knew she knew what game _this_ was, even as he laid all his cards out on the table.

“Does it really need saying?”

So they were letting each other go. She knew, suddenly, that she’d never imagined any of it. And she had to look away now and let him make his escape before it killed her.

“And you, Doctor? What was the end of that sentence?”

***

The Doctor went to the console and began punching buttons without looking at Donna, face stony but breath shaky. She stood back and let him have a moment to himself as the dematerialization sequence started.

On the beach, Rose started toward the TARDIS, watched as it pulled its slow vanishing act.

The Doctor’s hand was hovering over a lever when he paused. He looked up at the time rotor, an unfelt tear threading surreptitiously down his cheek. And, slowly, he grinned. And then he started laughing, _because he heard it._ He did. Oh, his brilliant, brilliant girl!

_I love you too, Doctor._


End file.
